Zoya Loredana + Shatter!

Hi guys! I was feeling inspired to try some new combinations with OPI Silver Shatter, so I decided to try it with Zoya's beautiful dark gray matte, Loredana! I don't even really like matte's, or dark colors, so I have no real idea what posessed me to order Loredana, but I am so happy I did! Loredana is a beautiful shimmery gray, and it looks so smooth with two coats, great coverage! I wore this at my bachelorette party with topcoat, it also looks beautiful that way!

Anyways here is a photo of Loredana before the shatter!

SO NICE!!!!!! LOVE IT.

And here is Zoya Loredana with OPI Silver Shatter on top! My crackliness is kind of hit or miss. Sometimes it crackles beautifully and sometimes it just has like one tiny line and you can't see the base color at all. I have to say, I'm not very impressed with OPI's silver shatter. (Disclaimer: I haven't tried any other brands of crackle or any other colors from OPI's Shatters). I am having this bizarre issue with the polish getting clumpy at the top of the bottle around the neck and I have no idea why, the bottle is clearly shut so there shouldn't be air getting in. Is anyone else having this problem? Should I contact OPI, maybe I have a defective one? Should I take it back to Ulta? What other brand should I try, as a replacement? I definitely still want silver! Just not very impressed with this overall - and what is the secret??? I have tried thin coats, thick coats, it never consistently crackles well, what is the deal!? OK done ranting....here is Loredana with silver shatter!

As you can see, the silver shatter crackled beautifully here! I was realllly happy with this combination, and I love the contrast between the two gray shades! :) I was really sad to have to take it off (to go to work)!

Hope you guys like it! :)

Franken #4 - Pink Sparkle!

Hi everyone! I'm back with some photos of Franken #4, which I'll call Pink Sparkle. It's a pretty generic name but....oh well! To create this pretty pink, I mixed the rest of my Petites Pretty in Pink with a little clear, and Zoya Astra, which is a super sparkly raspberry jelly-ish polish. Astra is GORGEOUS but I get frustrated when trying to remove the super-glitters, plus I wanted to give it a little solid color to mix in with the sparkle. I like how it turned out! :)

Sorry it's a little messy! I did it in the car while my husband and I were driving to watch a soccer game! :P I love the bright pink shade from Pretty in Pink, and Astra adds just the right amount of sparkle for my liking! :)

Facebook

You can find us on Facebook now! You should be able to search for Amy's Nails, but I'm not sure. I had some trouble getting it to be public for some reason! But I think I finally figured the whole 'Page' thing out, and can post that way now!

You can click on the lefthand side of the page to 'Like' us! Now you can stay tuned to my latest photos and updates on Facebook! :)

Mango Piñata - Franken!!

Hi guys!

OK I am getting totally into Frankens. I may have a problem.....we'll see soon I guess! So my second franken attempt turned out so well, I decided I had to make more! I went to Walmart and picked up some more clear polish, some BB's (to put in the polishes to help them shake up!), and came home and got to work on Franken #3, which I am dubbing Mango Piñata.


I combined:
Approximately 1/3 Wet'n'Wild Clear
Approximately 1/3 Forever 21 No Name Coral color
Approximately 1/3 Ulta Piñata-Yada-Yada
And a little dash of Petites Mango
Plus 2 Balls


I was totally inspired by Cristina's recent Franken (HERE) that had the same glitter polish in it, but decided to go for a saucy bright color! I love her super jelly finish on that one, and think maybe if I replicated Mango Piñata that I might do a tad less color, a tad less clear, and a tad more glitter! A tad is a very scientific unit, you know!


Here is the end result! I like it! Not quite as jelly as Pink Lily Love, a bit more opaque, with a little sparkle from the confetti! I wish that Piñata-Yada-Yada showed up a little better but I think it's just so dense, it's hard to get it evenly distributed in the bottle. Much shaking is needed, I think.

Yay! What do you all think? :)

Playing Around!

I was just playing around with layering some random polishes last night and thought I would share a pic!


On my thumb is Petites black with OPI I Lily Love You, two coats
On my pointer is Petites black with OPI Sparkle Teal Sunrise, two coats
On my middle finger is Petites Pretty In Pink with OPI I Lily Love You, one coat
On my ring finger is OPI Sweet Memories with OPI I Lily Love You, one coat
On my pinky finger is just OPI Sweet Memories

I reallllly liked my thumb! Originally I was experimenting because I want to do a new pedi but couldn't decide on a color. I may do the black with Sparkle Teal Sunrise but I can't see myself keeping that on for a very long time so I may not. My middle finger inspired my franken from yesterday's post :)

Here is a close up of my lovely thumb!! I love the flakies and I love how the pink base in ILLY just totally disappears into the black polish and all you're left with is the gorgeous sparkles! There is a huge flakie towards the top right area, I was obsessed with it, haha! Anyways the shimmer gives it sort of an oil slick effect but not quite, which I like! :)

What do you guys think? (Sorry for the bad iPhone pics. I need to call Sony about my camera!)

Pink Lily Love - Franken!!

I was going through some polishes I was going to get rid of, and I found a half used Petites clear, and I thought oooooh franken! I previously have made one other franken that was semi successful but was a pain in the butt to photograph. I'll put a pic up anyways though! For my first franken a few weeks ago, I used some NYC Black polish, and mixed it with Sally Hansen HD in Byte plus a few pink sparkles from a Bonbons polish, but just a few of those! I mixed them with a toothpick on a piece of paper and they looked so pretty, black with a pink shimmer! When I frankened them, it didn't work quite as well, but it does have a kind of nice shimmer to it. The issue with the photography was that I could only capture Byte's blue flash, not the pink, and it was irritating me! I think my real issue with it is that I don't really care for black mani's. I really want to like them, I just am not super hot on them. Anyways, here's a pic of my first Franken attempt. I took about 30 pics of this trying desperately to get the pink shimmer to show up, but this was the closest I got, under an artificial light :-/

ANYWAYS....for my second franken attempt I am mixing Petites clear with a Petites bright pink and OPI I Lily Love You. I hope it turns out gorgeous, because I really like I Lily Love You and don't want to waste it ^.^

EDIT: I'm back! Franken #2 is complete! I am dubbing it Pink Lily Love! It went much more smoothly than Franken attempt #1, I'm pleased to report! (I used a Bonbons bottle for that one and it's tiny neck made combining polishes a real pain in the you know what) But yay! This was much easier - I poured out a little of my Petites Clear (I had already used some of it, I poured it out until it was about half empty/full), then I mixed a generous helping of Petites Pretty In Pink, a few drops of Seche Vite to try and get a little glossiness (didn't work), and then the remaining ~20% I added OPI I Lily Love You! It is so pretty and squishy and I really like it! I actually wish it had a little bit more clear in it to give it a tad more squishiness but...I'll take it :)

This is two coats of Pink Lily Love topped with Seche Vite. On my pointer finger I did just one coat so you can see how it builds. I think next time I would do 3 coats to eliminate the VNL but it was starting to get dark and I was really excited to take a picture haha! Due to the iPhone pics it's a little blurry, sorry. But you can see in the bottle how it looks pretty well :) I love love love the flakies from I Lily Love You!!

I love Pink Lily Love! What do you guys think?!

Purple & Gold

A few weeks ago, I picked up OPI's Planks a Lot, a gorgeous light purple creme color. It is such a pretty color! You may have figured out by now that purple is my favorite color, and I had been looking for a light purple for a while, since I don't have one in my stash. I bought my flower girl at my wedding Zoya Malia, and it was so cute, she wore it on her fingers and toes! Our wedding color was purple so it fit right in but was girly and cute for her too! OK anyways....I liked Zoya Malia but didn't want to order from online since it can be so expensive if you're just getting one polish. Soooo when I saw Planks a Lot I was like "WANT!"

I decided I needed a little something to jazz up my manicure (I now see why people like stamping, it seems like a nice way to jazz up a manicure and you can do as much or as little as you want. Maybe I'll get into it someday!) so I decided to do an accent finger of one of my other new acquisitions and loves, Spark de Triomphe! I had a brain fart and painted all my nails with Planks a Lot before I realized I could have left my ring finger bare and just done SDT over it, haha, so you can see a little purple underneath it. Oh well!

(Sorry, stupid iPhone pic again)

It was a nice girly mani! I liked it a lot :) What do you think?

My Melmer!

Look! I'm finally posting pics of my Melmer! I put this together at least a month ago, haha, oh well! Better late than never right?! I printed off a 40% off coupon to Michael's and went and bought one of these 3 drawer sets. It says you can put it together in 30 minutes, actually it may have said 15, but at any rate, both those estimates are ridiculous because it took me like an hour and 15 to put it together! BUT I did it all by myself and if you have help it could probably be done much faster! But I really wanted to say I had done it all by myself, so husband watched TV while I did it! The next day I added my papers for decorating, added a healthy coating of mod podge, and let it dry! I used THESE decorations for decorating my Melmer :)

Now my polishes are all organized :) I put all my Zoya's and assorted others in the top drawer and all my OPI's in the middle drawer! In the bottom, I put my cotton balls and tools like nail files and such. It fits perfectly inside the closet in our bathroom (for towels and things) underneath where our shelves start, and there is a little buffer space, so I put my polish remover on top! I have seen some people make 2 of the units and stack them, but we just don't have the room in our apartment for it, so I'm sticking to one unit for now, and might build another one in the future!

What do you guys think of my Melmer? I love it! The only thing I have noticed (and maybe this is because I did something wrong?) is that the drawers tend to want to come out together, so I usually have to put a finger on one drawer while I slide out the other, so it will stay in place. Does that make sense? Oh well, it is a much better storage solution for my polish than my old little tupperware container was, so I don't really mind!

Davis Cup Nails!

Hi everyone!

So I mentioned in my last post that the husband and I were driving down to Austin (from Dallas) to go to the Davis Cup tennis, which was USA vs Spain, a semifinal round! Spain won, though :( I guess my Serena Williams nails didn't help :(

In keeping with the tennis theme of the weekend, I decided to break out my new Serena Williams set - I got Servin Up Sparkle paired with Grape Set Match! Grape Set Match is a really nice shimmery purple that has some pink and blue flashes. I didn't really buy the set for the purple, though, we'll just say that. I REALLY wanted Servin Up Sparkle! It is a gorgeous holographic glitter that has some little glitter pieces but also some hexagonal bigger pieces. They all flash holographic and it's pretty when indoors but outside in the sun it's like BAM!!! Sparkle everywhere! :) I definitely recommend enlarging these - they actually turned out pretty well for iPhone pics!

Inside the arena! I think it looks kind of like stars in the sky at night!

and....SPARKLE! :)

What do you guys think?

Bad Camera, and More!

So I haven't been posting lately, boo me. I am so busy, but I am gonna try and post here at least once a week because I do love nail polish and sharing my polish with you all, and even though I am busy I think it's important I find time to do things other than work and trying not to fall asleep when I'm not at work! (I have worked the last 10 days in a row at Starbucks and I am exhausted!)

I decided it was time to stop posting iPhone pics of my mani's and I pulled out my digital camera to take some pics of my Zoya Mira + OPI Funky Dunkey comparison and it wouldn't focus on anything! Even with flash the photos are totally blurry. So clearly there is something wrong with it, and I need to call Sony and make them fix it because it's been less than a year since I got the camera and I haven't even used it since like April so there's no reason it shouldn't be still working perfectly, since it was the last time I used it! Everyone cross your fingers that they will fix it for me and for free! :)

My new hubby and I decided that I get a $30 a month allocation for nail polish - haha! I was like "I probably don't even need that much!" Think again....last month I spent like $20 of it and this month I've already spent my allowance, haha! I actually went over 2 dollars, but shh don't tell Daniel!

Anyways my newest purchases are all OPI...weird! Normally I don't like their stuff but they've come out with some lovely glitters lately and I just can't help myself - I love glitters!

I went to Ulta the other day to take advantage of their buy 2 get 1 free OPI promotion - there was a catch, though. The free one had to be a base coat, a top coat, or one from their new Shimmer collection. Luckily, I really liked one of the glitters so it worked out for me :)

I bought the gorgeous pink glitter I Lily Love You (from the Nice Stems collection), a pretty pink creme called Sweet Memories, and got the turquoise sparkle 'Sparkle Teal Sunset' from the Shimmer collection for free! Then I saw OPI Funky Dunkey on sale for $4.99, and thought it looked like a total dupe for Zoya Mira (one of my fave purples - also my wedding pedicure color!) so I bought it! And finally, I went back to Ulta a couple days later and picked up the new Serena Williams set Grape...Set...Match, and Servin Up Sparkle. I love SUS so much! So sparkly and pretty :) I will try and get some photos soon if I can get some decent pics.

This weekend I am going to the Davis Cup in Austin, TX which is a tennis tournament, and I am pretty sure I am gonna wear the Serena pair, just because of the tennis connection, hehe! :)

Have a great weekend everyone! :)